'Winds of Winter' Release Date Latest News: Book Could Take Up to 3 Years to Finish
The "A Song of Ice and Fire" series author George R.R. Martin has been keeping mum about when the next installment in the series, titled "Winds of Winter," will be released. Part of the reason why the famous author refuses to give a release date is because he does not really know when he'll be finished.
"I don't know," said Martin. "I have days where I make lots of progress, I have days where I make next to no progress, I have days where I think I'm going backwards because I don't like what I wrote yesterday."
Martin also said that the long wait in between books is in part due to his working process, and that he has reportedly done the same thing for 40 years now. It can be recalled that the author revealed in an interview with Conan O'Brien that he still uses a DOS computer to write his books.
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"I can't write many more than one word at a time. And I know myself—I'm 65 years old now, and I've been writing professionally since 1971," said Martin. "I know my working methods. I don't work when I travel, I don't work in hotels, I don't work in airplanes, I don't work on trains."
"I work at home when I have a nice big uninterrupted block of time when I can really lose myself in my work. It's worked for me my entire adult life. I'm not going to change it now because some people are too impatient for the next book," he added.
Fans who have waited for so long have decided to make jokes out of the situation, and new George R.R. Martin memes have sprouted almost every month on the Internet. Among the most famous ones are the ones alluding to his writing process and his predilection for killing off characters such as:
"Every single time someone asks me how much until the next book…I kill a Stark," one read.
"I don't always kill a Stark. Just kidding, Yes I do," said another.
In public readings, Martin has revealed that some of his most loved characters are still alive as he read chapters from "Winds of Winter" from the viewpoint of Sansa Stark, Arya Stark, and Tyrion Lannister.
"Winds of Winter" won't be the last book, as the author announced that it will be followed by "A Dream of Spring," which will be the final book in the series.
In January 2014, Martin's U.K. publisher tweeted that the book would "certainly" not be published before 2015. An analysis of the author's writing pace puts the book's launch date somewhere between 2015 and 2017, according to Fivethirtyeight.com.
